Part 18 (2/2)

30

The two small clicks the blades made were not attractive sounds. Reacher's stomach clenched. He hated knives. He would have preferred it if the guy had pulled a pair of six-shooters. Guns can miss. In fact they usually did, given stress and pressure and trembling and confusion. After-action reports proved it. The papers were always full of DOAs gunned down with seven bullets to the body, which sounded lethal until you read down into the third paragraph and learned that a hundred and fifty shots had been fired in the first place.

Knives didn't miss. If they touched you, they cut you. The only opponents Reacher truly feared were small whippy guys with fast hands and sharp blades. The big deputy was not fast or nimble, but with knives in his hands dodged blows would not mean dull impacts to the shoulders. They would mean open wounds, pouring blood, severed ligaments and arteries.

Not good.

Reacher clubbed a spectator out of his seat and grabbed the empty chair and held it out in front of him like a lion tamer. The best defense against knives was distance. The best countermove was entanglement. A swung net or coat or blanket was often effective. The blade would hang up in the fabric. But Reacher didn't have a net or a coat or a blanket. A horizontal forest of four chair legs was all he had. He jabbed forward like a fencer and then fell back and shoved another guy out of his seat. Picked up the second empty chair and threw it overhand at the big guy's head. The big guy turned away reflexively and brought his right hand up to s.h.i.+eld his face and took the chair on the forearm. Reacher stepped back in and jabbed hard. Got one chair leg in the guy's solar plexus and another in his gut. The guy fell back and took a breath and then came on hard, arms swinging, the blades hissing through the air and winking in the lights.

Reacher danced backward and jabbed with his chair. Made solid contact with the guy's upper arm. The guy spun one way and then the other. Reacher moved left and jabbed again. Got a chair leg into the back of the guy's head. The guy staggered one short step and then came back hard, hands low and apart, the blades moving through tiny dangerous arcs.

Reacher backed off. Shoved a third spectator out of his seat and threw the empty chair high and hard. The big guy flinched away and jerked his arms up and the chair bounced off his elbows. Reacher was ready. He stepped in and jabbed hard and caught the guy low down in the side, below the ribs, above the waist, two hundred and fifty pounds of weight punched through the blunt end of a chair leg into nothing but soft tissue.

The big guy stopped fighting.

His body froze and went rigid and his face crumpled. He dropped both knives and clamped both hands low down on his stomach. For a long moment he stood like a statue and then he jerked forward from the waist and bent down and puked a long stream of blood and mucus on the floor. He staggered away in a crouch and fell to his knees. His shoulders sagged and his face went waxy and bloodless. His stomach heaved and he puked again. More blood, more mucus. He braced his spread fingertips either side of the spreading pool and tried to push himself upward. But he didn't make it. He collapsed sideways in a heap. His eyes rolled up in his head and he rolled on his back and he started breathing fast and shallow. One hand moved back to his stomach and the other beat on the floor. He threw up again, projectile, a fountain of blood vertically into the air. Then he rolled away and curled into a fetal ball.

Game over.

The bar went silent. No sound, except ragged breathing. The air was full of dust and the stink of blood and vomit. Reacher was shaky with excess adrenaline. He forced himself back under control and put his chair down quietly and bent and picked up the fallen knives. Pressed the blades back into the handles against the wood of the bar and slipped both knives into one pocket. Then he stepped around in the silence and checked his results. The first guy he had hit was unconscious on his back. The elbow to the bridge of the nose was always an effective blow. Too hard, and it can slide shards of bone into the frontal lobes. Badly aimed, it can put splinters of cheekbone into the eye sockets. But this one had been perfectly judged. The guy would be sick and groggy for a week, but he would recover.

The guy who had started the evening with a busted jaw had added a rebroken nose and a bad headache. The new guy at the back of the room had a broken arm from the stool and maybe a concussion from being driven headfirst into the wall. The guy next to him was unconscious from the kick in the head. The deputy who the stool had missed had busted ribs and a broken wrist and a cracked larynx.

Major damage all around, but the whole enterprise had been voluntary from the start.

So, five for five, plus some kind of a medical explanation for the sixth. The big guy had stayed in the fetal position and looked very weak and pale. Like he was hollowed out with sickness. Reacher bent down and checked the pulse in his neck and found it weak and thready. He went through the guy's pockets and found a five-pointed star in the front of the s.h.i.+rt. The badge was made of pewter and two lines were engraved in its center:Towns.h.i.+p of Despair, Police Deputy. Reacher put it in his own s.h.i.+rt pocket. He found a bunch of keys and a thin wad of money in a bra.s.s clip. He kept the keys and left the cash. Then he looked around until he found the bartender. The guy was where he had started, leaning back with his fat a.s.s against his register drawer. Reacher put it in his own s.h.i.+rt pocket. He found a bunch of keys and a thin wad of money in a bra.s.s clip. He kept the keys and left the cash. Then he looked around until he found the bartender. The guy was where he had started, leaning back with his fat a.s.s against his register drawer.

”Call the plant,” Reacher said. ”Get the ambulance down here. Take care with the big guy. He doesn't look good.”

His beer was where he had left it, still upright on its napkin. He drained the last of it and set the bottle back down again and walked out the front door into the night.

31

It took ten minutes of aimless driving south of the main drag before he found Nickel Street. The road signs were small and faded and the headlights on Vaughan's old truck were weak and set low. He deciphered Iron and Chromium and Vanadium and Molybdenum and then lost metals altogether and ran through a sequence of numbered avenues before he hit Steel and Platinum and then Gold. Nickel was a dead end off Gold. It had sixteen houses, eight facing eight, fifteen of them small and one of them bigger.

Thurman's pet judge Gardner lived in the big house on Nickel, the bartender had said. Reacher paused at the curb and checked the name on the big house's mailbox and then pulled the truck into the driveway and shut it down. Climbed out and walked to the porch. The place was a medium-sized farmhouse-style structure and looked pretty good relative to its neighbors, but there was no doubt that Gardner would have done better for himself if he had gotten out of town and made it to the Supreme Court in D.C. Or to whatever Circuit included Colorado, or even to night traffic court in Denver. The porch sagged against rotted underpinnings and the paint on the clapboards had aged to dust. Millwork had dried and split. There were twin newel posts at the top of the porch steps. Both had decorative ball shapes carved into their tops and both b.a.l.l.s had split along the grain, like they had been attacked with cleavers.

Reacher found a bell push and tapped it twice with his knuckle. An old habit, about not leaving fingerprints if not strictly necessary. Then he waited. In Reacher's experience the average delay when knocking at a suburban door in the middle of the evening was about twenty seconds. Couples looked up from the television and looked at each other and asked,Who could that be? At this time of night? Then they mimed their way through offer and counteroffer and finally decided which one of them should make the trip down the hall. Before nine o'clock it was usually the wife. After nine, it was usually the husband. Then they mimed their way through offer and counteroffer and finally decided which one of them should make the trip down the hall. Before nine o'clock it was usually the wife. After nine, it was usually the husband.

It was Mrs. Gardner who opened up. The wife, after a twenty-three-second delay. She looked similar to her husband, bulky and somewhere over sixty, with a full head of white hair. Only the amount of the hair and the style of her clothing distinguished her gender. She had the kind of large firm curls that women get from big heated rollers and she was wearing a shapeless gray dress that reached her ankles. She stood there, patterned and indistinct behind a screen door. She said, ”May I help you?”

Reacher said, ”I need to see the judge.”

”It's awful late,” Mrs. Gardner said, which it wasn't. According to an old longcase clock in the hallway behind her it was eight twenty-nine, and according to the clock in Reacher's head it was eight thirty-one, but what the woman meant was:You're a big ugly customer. Reacher smiled. Reacher smiled.Look at yourself, Vaughan had said. Vaughan had said.What do you see? Reacher knew he was no kind of an ideal nighttime visitor. Nine times out of ten only Mormon missionaries were less welcome than him. Reacher knew he was no kind of an ideal nighttime visitor. Nine times out of ten only Mormon missionaries were less welcome than him.

”It's urgent,” he said.

The woman stood still and said nothing. In Reacher's experience the husband would show up if the doorstep interview lasted any longer than thirty seconds. He would crane his neck out of the living room and call,Who is it, dear? And Reacher wanted the screen door open long before that happened. He wanted to be able to stop the front door from closing, if necessary. And Reacher wanted the screen door open long before that happened. He wanted to be able to stop the front door from closing, if necessary.

”It's urgent,” he said again, and pulled the screen door. It screeched on worn hinges. The woman stepped back, but didn't try to slam the front door. Reacher stepped inside and let the screen slap shut behind him. The hallway smelled of still air and cooking. Reacher turned and closed the front door gently and clicked it against the latch. At that point the thirty seconds he had been counting in his head elapsed and the judge stepped out to the hallway.

The old guy was dressed in the same gray suit pants Reacher had seen before, but his suit coat was off and his tie was loose. He stood still for a moment, evidently searching his memory, because after ten long seconds puzzlement left his face and was replaced by an altogether different emotion, and he said, ”You?”

Reacher nodded.

”Yes, me,” he said.

”What do you want? What do you mean by coming here?”

”I came here to talk to you.”

”I meant, what are you doing in Despair at all? You were excluded.”

”Didn't take,” Reacher said. ”So sue me.”

”I'm going to call the police.”

”Please do. But they won't answer, as I'm sure you know. Neither will the deputies.”

”Where are the deputies?”

”On their way up to the first-aid station.”

”What happened to them?”

”I did.”

The judge said nothing.

Reacher said, ”And Mr. Thurman is up in his little airplane right now. Out of touch for another five and a half hours. So you're on your own. It's initiative time for Judge Gardner.”

”What do you want?”

”I want you to invite me into your living room. I want you to ask me to sit down and whether I take cream and sugar in my coffee, which I don't, by the way. Because so far I'm here with your implied permission, and therefore I'm not trespa.s.sing. I'd like to keep it that way.”

”You're not only trespa.s.sing, you're in violation of a town ordinance.”

”That's what I'd like to talk about. I'd like you to reconsider. Consider it an appeals process.”

”Are you nuts?”

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